MANTOLOKING, N.J. -- Officials in this Jersey shore community have a message for homeowners who are refusing to allow emergency sand dunes to be built on their property:

They'll take the property by force if they have to.

"A selfish and short-sighted group of people are going to cost this town a lot of money," said Councilman Steve Gillingham. "We're moving from the friendly persuasion approach we've been taking to some assertive legal action. The town will be releasing the names of this small, but difficult group."

The issue pits shore protection versus property rights. Mantoloking wants an easement to build emergency dunes on the property of oceanfront homeowners to protect against major storms such as Sandy.

Chris Nelson, a spokesman for the borough, said Wednesday that the necessary easement would impact 128 homeowners. All but a few -- "I can count them on one hand" -- have expressed no reservations about turning over a strip of their land to the town for temporary sand dune construction with geotubes.

A special counsel has been appointed by the Borough Council to initiate eminent domain proceedings against oceanfront property owners who fail to provide an easement to the municipal government so it can take emergency steps to shore up its 2 miles of beach from future storms.

Nelson said the borough remains hopeful that those four or five homeowners will come around by the Friday deadline to file the easements.

"We're still persuading," he said. "April 26th is the deadline and it's a soft deadline. Many oceanfront homeowners are traveling overseas or live elsewhere."

The mayor expressed pessimism Tuesday about whether those holdouts would sign. He says the town has no choice but to take action if it wants to survive.

"We've got to get those," said Mayor George C. Nebel.

In some cases, there are summer homes owned by multiple members of the same family and require that all of those relatives sign off on the easement, which can be logistically complicated and may spawn disagreements. In other circumstances, there are homeowners who are still waiting to hear from their insurance companies on whether they can rebuild at all. There are others who simply have a philosophical objection to handing over their property "to the state."

The council on Tuesday voted to authorize Nebel to enter into a contract with attorney Paul V. Fernicola, one of the most prominent eminent domain lawyers on the Jersey Shore.

The work is desperately needed in Mantoloking, which saw every one of its 521 homes damaged in Superstorm Sandy. The Oct. 29 disaster tore an inlet through the middle of the borough, joining the Atlantic Ocean and Barnegat Bay. The town, home to about 300 permanent residents, was the wealthiest in Ocean County before the storm. As a result of Sandy, almost 29 percent of its tax base, or about $461 million in assessed property value, was lost, according to the Ocean County Board of Taxation.

About 60 homes in town, along with much of the public works infrastructure, were washed away. Another 200 houses sustained catastrophic flood damage and have either been demolished or are slated for demolition.

In the six months that have passed since the storm, Mantoloking remains a disaster area, with much of the town still in ruins and uninhabitable.